For many people, coffee is far more than just a literal energizing part of their daily breakfast. Lovers of the drink see it as the elixir of life - and strive to preserve the delicious (unfortunately quickly perishable…) aroma for as long as possible. In this context, it is advisable to freeze coffee. You can find out how to proceed in our guide!

Coffee loses less aroma in the freezer

Why is it useful to freeze coffee?

Coffee has a very volatile aroma by nature. Just by pouring several coffee beans from the pack into the grinder, part of the pleasantly warm smell and taste is irretrievably lost. Using this example, you can certainly imagine what happens when you store an opened pack of coffee for a long time. This scenario should be avoided. That means concretely that you have the coffee either

  • Use up within a few weeks or
  • should freeze.

Freeze your coffee properly, protect the aroma of the beans. You can still enjoy the finest aromatic coffee a few weeks or even months later.

In short: If you want to store coffee for several weeks and prevent excessive loss of aroma, you should freeze the beans.

Freeze coffee properly - this is how it works step by step

  1. Divide your coffee beans into smaller portions - about two to three daily rations.
  2. Place each serving in a small freezer bag.
  3. Vacuum all freezer bags. You need a vacuum sealer for this. Alternatively, you can suck the air out with your mouth. "Pull" powerfully!
  4. Close the freezer bags tightly - i.e. absolutely airtight.
  5. Place the bags of coffee beans in the freezer.

Important: Only freeze coffee beans. Ground coffee is not suitable for this - for the following reason: every single coffee bean contains fats and moisture. If it is ground, a large part of it escapes and volatilizes. Thus, ground coffee is already considerably more moist than whole coffee beans. This accelerates the loss of flavor.

What should be considered when defrosting/processing?

At least as important, if not more crucial than freezing, is the thawing or further processing of the frozen coffee beans.

Thaw frozen coffee

  1. Thaw the coffee beans in their airtight freezer bag. In this way you avoid an oxygen supply, which ensures that the dreaded condensation reaction (condensation water causes the loss of the intensive coffee aroma) does not occur.
  2. Remove the coffee beans from the freezer bag when they have reached room temperature.
  3. Grind the beans as usual and enjoy delicious coffee.

Process frozen beans directly

Alternatively, you can take the frozen beans out of the freezer bag and grind them directly. Coffee beans have a relatively low moisture content, so there are no condensation problems with this approach.

tips

This procedure should even have a positive effect on the taste, since the beans are not exposed to any heat. The latter always lets part of the aroma evaporate.

Important: Only take as many freezer bags with coffee beans out of the cupboard as you want/can use on the same day. Coffee beans that have been thawed should not be refrozen. Large temperature differences create moisture that damages the coffee.

The garden journal freshness ABC

How can fruit and vegetables be stored correctly so that they stay fresh for as long as possible?

The garden journal freshness ABC as a poster:

  • as a free PDF file to print out yourself

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